Close-mid central rounded vowel

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Legend: unrounded • rounded

The close-mid central rounded vowel, or high-mid central rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨⟩, a lowercase barred letter o. The value was specified only in 1993; until then, ⟨⟩ represented the mid central rounded vowel .

The character ɵ has been used in several Latin-derived alphabets such as the one for Yañalif but then denotes a sound that is different from that of the IPA. The character is homographic with Cyrillic Ө. The Unicode code point is U+019F Ɵ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH MIDDLE TILDE.

This vowel occurs in Cantonese, French, Russian and Swedish as well as in a number of English dialects as a realization of (as in foot), (as in nurse) or (as in goat). It occurs in Dutch as a realisation of (as in bus).

Close-mid central protruded vowel

The close-mid central protruded vowel is typically transcribed in IPA simply as ⟨⟩, and that is the convention used in this article. As there is no dedicated diacritic for protrusion in the IPA, the symbol for the close central rounded vowel with an old diacritic for labialization, ⟨⟩, can be used as an ad hoc symbol ⟨⟩ for the close central protruded vowel. Another possible transcription is ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩ (a close central vowel modified by endolabialization), but this could be misread as a diphthong.

Features

• Its vowel height is close-mid, also known as high-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a close vowel (a high vowel) and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
• Its roundedness is protruded, which means that the corners of the lips are drawn together, and the inner surfaces exposed.

Occurrence

Because central rounded vowels are assumed to have protrusion, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some of the following may actually have compression.